Job-Search Advice for College Seniors and Recent College Grads: Job-Hunting in Times of Uncertainty

It seems pretty unfair when you think about it. You've worked hard in school for some 15
or more years, including 4 or more years in college, all with the plan that once you made
it through all that schooling, you would have a good-paying job waiting for you. But now,
with the U.S. and global economies mired in the slowdown of a generation and saddled
with college debt, you face an uncertain future.

There may be no good-paying job waiting for you. Those who have already graduated and
are still searching for a job in your career field know that. And for you seniors graduating this year,
many fewer good-paying jobs waiting for you. That said, the more prepared you are --
and the more you maximize your job-search efforts -- the more likely you will be one of the
lucky ones who does land a great job.

It's certainly not the best time to be a recent college graduate or a college senior, but that
doesn't mean you have to give up on finding a good job and retreat back home to your
family's basement (since your mom has already made your bedroom into her workout room).
Nor should it mean you give up on a job-search altogether and forge on to grad school,
hoping by the time you finish your graduate degree the job market will be better.

No. Instead, if you follow the advice in this article, you can increase the odds that you will indeed
be one of the lucky few who find a good-paying job. And yes, by the way, these strategies will
work in all economic situations -- but they will especially help in times of uncertainty.

The job-search advice in this article is separated into tips for those who have already graduated
college or are about to in December and those who will graduate next spring.

Recent College Grad Job-Search Advice

1. Obtain Job Leads.

The most important activity for recent graduates is finding and developing job leads,
defined as actual or potential job openings. The best job leads come from your network of
contacts -- partly because they are the most current and partly because you may be able to
leverage inside information about the job to tailor your resume and interview responses to
become a top prospect. Plus, employers favor applicants referred to them.

If you don't have a big network (and everyone's is bigger than you first think), or you don't
have many contacts in a certain industry, occupation, profession, or location, one of the most
underutilized tools -- especially for new grads -- is the informational interview. As the name implies,
it's a meeting in which you seek information (and further contacts and potential job leads) from
the person you interview. Informational interviews are a powerful resource and should be a key
tool in your job-search plan.

While informational interviews are about expanding your network, enough cannot be said about
the many positive outcomes from this technique. Many former students who have conducted
informational interviews have eventually received job offers as a direct result of their informational
interviews. In fact, one out of every 12 informational interviews results in a job offer. That's
why informational interviewing is the ultimate networking technique, especially considering
that the purpose of informational interviewing is not to get job offers. Read more in our
Informational Interviewing Tutorial
as well as my Career Doctor response:
What are informational
interviews -- and why should I do them?

There are, of course, a number of other ways to generate job leads -- and you should try to
incorporate many of them in your job-search. For more details, read this article:
10 Ways to Develop Job Leads.

2. Polish Personal Branding.

The next activity to tackle is developing -- or putting some sparkle -- on your personal brand.
While you can't really change the experiences you have had at this point, you can position them
more strategically -- while sharpening how you express that experience on your resume and in job interviews.

While business and marketing grads might have a bit of a leg up on the lingo, the underlying
fundamentals of personal branding is simply to make you a more attractive job prospect to
employers. This process involves not only re-examining all of your previous experiences (full- and
part-time work, volunteering, class projects, work-study), but also researching each potential
employer to understand the organization's needs and package yourself to be the perfect solution to
solve their employment needs.

3. Never Stop Your Follow-Up.

Remember how you kept hounding that one professor to raise your grade -- how you would not
take any other answer because you felt you deserved the better grade? And remember how it
worked? The same holds true for job-hunting in the sense that the job-seeker who regularly follows
up with prospective employers -- continuing to build your case and express interest and fit with the
organization -- will be given the most serious consideration.

Yes, it's true that you have already invested quite a bit of time and energy -- obtaining job leads,
writing and polishing your resume, preparing for interviews, and taking part in the interviews -- but
sometimes the difference between getting called back for another interview and getting eventually
rejected is follow-up.

Follow-up starts before you even get called in for an interview by contacting the hiring manager
(after you have applied for the position) to ensure he or she has all the information needed to make
a decision. Follow-up starts after the interview with a thank-you letter to each (yes, each) person
who interviews you and continues later with calls or emails to the hiring manager to highlight your fit
and continued interest in the organization. (As hiring decisions lengthen in duration, staying in
touch with the hiring manager becomes even more important.)

College Senior Job-Search Advice

1. Max Out Your Experience.

While you're still in school, find time to fill any experience voids in your resume so that by
the time you begin your job-search, you'll be an unbeatable prospect to employers. If you
have not yet worked in your field, now is the time to secure an internship -- whether during
one of the terms or during your holiday break (or even during your spring break). Internships
are your strongest experience, but certainly not your only experience.

If you're like most college students, you probably belong to a few student organizations. As a
senior, you're typically expected to help lead -- and employers want to see that leadership ability,
so grab a leadership position in at least one organization.

Of course, many other types of experiences can benefit you -- some of which few students ever
list on their resumes, such as work-study, part-time jobs, volunteer work, team sports, and class projects.

2. Use Your Career Services Office.

As a college senior, you should be well acquainted with the multitude of services offered by your
school's career center. No? Sadly, you're not alone. But it's not too late to learn of all their services --
and to take advantage of as many of them as you can.

Some typical services you can find in your school's career center include resume-writing assistance,
internship and job leads, career and job-related workshops, resume posting on the school's job site,
mock interviewing and other interview tools, employer information sessions, on-campus interviews
and career fairs, and networking connections (including one of the best networking sources: alumni).

In fact, most of the folks who work in these offices will do everything they can to help you prepare for the job market.

3. Develop a Job-Search Plan.

Maybe in a good economy you can get away with just winging it and seeing what happens come
graduation, but in a bad economy one of your best tools in landing at least one great job offer is
developing a job-search plan. This month-by-month plan maps out the rest of your senior year, providing
a broad strategy and timetable for perfecting and implementing your job-search.
Your job-search plan -- which you should develop and implement as soon as possible -- includes all the
sources of job leads you intend to use, including informational interviews, your network of contacts,
career services office, college professors, job fairs, job boards, and cold-calling. It also includes all the
activities you need to accomplish before starting your job-search, such as polishing your resume and
prepping for job interviews.

Start your job-search plan with the basics of what you seek -- the type(s) of job, the nature of
employer (corporate culture), and the geographic location of where you want to live. If you're not really
sure of any of these things, then start your plan here -- because these basics are the foundation for
success. But your job-search plan will also include all three elements listed above for new grads, including
finding job leads, polishing your personal career brand, and following up everything.

Final Thoughts on Empowering Your Job-Search

Some of our students and former students jokingly refer to Quintessential Careers as a
black hole because of the depth of information we have on these subjects -- and it's true...
you can go as deeply as you want on all the topics discussed in this article because of
the site's goal to provide you with all the tools to empower your first real job-search.

So, with that depth in mind, here are a few more key resources for recent college grads and college seniors.

Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key college, career, and job-search
terms by going to our Job-Seeker's Glossary of Job-Hunting Terms.

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